


From Ashes

by PhoenixDown (SekseeDragoness)



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Character Death, Cloud's Birthday 2018, Gen, Nibel Hopper's are real in my world, Nibel Knockout
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-12
Updated: 2018-08-12
Packaged: 2019-06-26 09:04:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,990
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15660057
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SekseeDragoness/pseuds/PhoenixDown
Summary: Cloud's Birthday Fic 2018!! (A day late but whatever)Cloud finds a cute Nibel native down in the labs... snuggles ensue. XD





	From Ashes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [EvilRobotCat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/EvilRobotCat/gifts).



Silence was what greeted him as he woke. Silence and chaos.  
He blinked slowly as he sat up, wondering where he was, why he was surrounded by smoke and why he was laying on the floor. He looked around and his confusion only became worse. He was clearly down in the labs, sitting beside him was a Nibel Hopper who looked up at him before going back to calmly cleaning its floppy ears, but everything else around him was destroyed.  


The windows had been completely blown out into the corridor, all of the scientific equipment was shattered or laying on the ground and across the room from him was a disturbingly neat little pile of ashes, which appeared to be where the smoke had come from as there was still a small trail of smoke, lazily curling up towards the roof, from it.Cloud looked down at himself to check for injuries and was surprised to find none. Well, other than the loss of hearing and the bump on the back of his head that was likely a result of hitting the floor.  


He slowly climbed to his feet, before taking an unsteady step towards the door, but before he could take a second step he felt a tug on the bottom of his pants. He looked down to see the hopper tugging at his pant leg. He bent down and scooped the little guy up and it snuggled in against his chest, then closed its eyes to sleep. Cloud couldn't help but melt a little.  


He shook himself out of his stupor and tried to remember what had happened as he started for the door again. He remembered his morning classes and lunch with Zack, he remembered being called down to the labs in the middle of hand-to-hand and then having to wait over an hour in the waiting area, it was everything after that, that was a little fuzzy.  
He stopped to push the door out of his way. It's top had torn away from the hinge and had fallen across the doorway diagonally so he pushed the top up and quickly ducked out of the room. Looking down the empty hallways, he could see all of the emergency warning lights flashing red.  


He headed towards the only exit he knew of, not surprised to find that every hallway he crossed was also completely empty. He wasn't even surprised when he got to the exit to find it wouldn't open. Clearly, the labs had been put into lockdown. He sighed as he turned around, trying to decide what he should do.  


Figuring he should just stay where he was until the situation was sorted out, he moved over and slid down the wall across from the exit. Adjusting himself so that the Hopper was secure in his arms, he leaned his head back against the wall and closed his eyes while he tried to remember what had happened after getting to the waiting room.

***  
_He had been in the middle of getting his ass beaten by one of the guys in his hand-to-hand class when a messenger came in and told him that he was required down in the labs immediately. He was a little confused, but they had all been required to get blood tests a few days earlier so he figured it was an issue with the results._  
__

_It made him a little nervous and his mind had gone to all of the darkest places while waiting to be seen by someone. He had already worked himself into a panic a few times before getting to the point of being just plain annoyed. Clearly, it wasn't that urgent if he was called in 'immediately' only to wait over an hour to see anyone and in his boredom, he had resorted to counting the tiles on the floor in the cold, empty waiting area._  
__

_It was while doing this that he saw a small movement from across the room. He looked up and found himself looking at a creature so familiar that it was strange. It was a Nibel Hopper. They were the Jumpings far smaller and much less aggressive cousin and they were native only to a few areas on Gaia. He knew this was, in fact, a Nibel Hopper due to the long hair and lop ears that distinguished it from other Hoppers._  
__

_The hopper spotted him and froze for a moment, before raising onto its hind legs and sniffing the air towards him. Cloud tried his hardest not to squeal at how cute the little twitching nose was. The Hopper, seeming satisfied with his scent, got back down on all four fuzzy little paws and slowly loped over to him. Cloud sighed a little at the realization that even a small woodland creature didn't find him threatening enough to stay away from, but also couldn't care less, because he now had a cute little bundle of fluff at his feet._  
__

_He very slowly reached down to the Hopper to gently stroke the fur between its ears. After a few minutes, when the Hopper didn't even flinch at the contact, Cloud got bold enough to try to pick the little furball up. It made a little squeak and scrambled it's feet a little, but once it was sitting in his lap, it calmed down enough to fall asleep._  
__

_As Cloud was petting him, he had a bad idea._  
__

_The little guy was probably an escaped lab test subject, but it didn't appear to have been used yet. It had no marks or tags of any sort and clearly wasn't afraid of humans, so he figured it wouldn't hurt to snuggle the poor thing and maybe, if the appointment was short, he could hide him and smuggle him out of the labs. Who could let a fellow Nibel native get used as a lab experiment? Not Cloud Strife, that's for sure._  
__

_It was decided, Cloud was on a mission to save the Nibel Hopper. He very quickly took his scarf and shoulder guards off. He wrapped the shoulder guards together with the straps used to attach them so that they made a hollow shell and then made what he hoped would be a cozy little bed inside the guards, with his scarf. He carefully placed the Hopper inside the bad and then, once it seemed happy with its new resting place, he arranged the scarf so that it just looked like it was stuffed inside the guards haphazardly. Now it would just look like he had gotten comfortable by taking the items off and bundling them together._  
__

_He finished just in time, as he heard footsteps approach. He carefully picked up the bundle and waited._  
***

He was brought out of his memory by vibrations in the floor from a large group of people approaching the door. He didn't have his self-made Hopper nest anymore and there was no time to make or find a new one, so he did the only thing he could think to do, He stood up and shoved it down his top.  


The Hopper, after getting over the initial shock, started exploring it's new terrain, while Cloud tried to get it to stop and stay still before the people came in.  
Just before the light beside the door started to flash, warning of the release of the security lock, the Hopper settled down and stayed still. It was now curled up against his lower back and Cloud had no idea how he was going to play that off as nothing if someone saw it.  


Keeping his back to the wall, he waited as the doors opened and he was faced with the barrels of several guns. There was movement behind one helmet and he figured someone was probably yelling orders at him. He had slowly lifted his hands in the air to show he was no threat and awkwardly pointed at his ears while trying to say he couldn't hear, but he couldn't even tell if he was talking or just mouthing the words.  


There was more movement and the guns seemed to become steadier on him, so he shook his head with a confused look on his face and pointed at his ears again while shrugging. As one of the guards stepped forward seeming intent on putting Cloud down with force, there was a movement among the men in the back of the group. The guard who had stepped forward had stopped and turned slightly to see what was going on and Cloud sighed in relief as he saw a Spikey black head appear among the troops.

As Zack pushed his way through, He spotted Cloud and the worried expression on his face became flooded with relief. His mouth was moving rapidly as he talked at Cloud but all he could do was make the same gestures he had made for the guards and try to tell him he couldn't hear.

Zack frowned in response and then turned to the men behind him. He seemed to be talking to them for a while before they all dispersed down the different corridors of the lab to check on the rest of the situation. As soon as they were gone, Zack turned around and grabbed Cloud into a bear hug. He could feel the vibration of him talking and figured he was telling him how worried he had been or something.  


It wasn't until he felt a movement against his lower back and Zack moved back from him a little to give him a look of confusion, that Cloud remembered the poor Hopper who had likely just gotten a little squished by the hug.  


Cloud grinned up at Zack sheepishly as he started to shift the little fluff ball around to his front and then reached down his top to carefully pull the little guys head out of the neck of his top. He pouted up at Zack and tilted his head watching as Zack looked between the Hopper's cute, sleepy, little face and the Cadet pouting up at him, before grinning as the SOLDIER appeared to burst out laughing.  


He quickly ushered Cloud and his escapee out of the vicinity, before taking the Hopper off of his friend. The Hopper took to Zack as quickly as it had taken to Cloud, which made him feel a little better, because Zack was a living breathing weapon, and it wasn't afraid of him either. After a quick detour to drop the Hopper off at Zack's apartment, they went back down to the med wards.

Cloud was looked over and blood tests were taken before someone used a full Curaga on him. The sound came rushing back in with a vengeance and Cloud winced as he was suddenly assaulted by noise. Even the sound of his own breathing was loud. Seeing this the nurse quickly put some earplugs in for him. They didn't block out all sound, but enough that it wasn't so overwhelming. Cloud sighed in relief and nodded to the nurse when she asked him if that was better.  


Zack sat with him while they ran a few more tests and once they were done, he was able to take the earplugs out without the noises being too much for him. He was given a tentative all-clear to go but was put under the care of Zack for the next few days just to be sure.  


All they knew was that there was some sort of explosion in one of the labs and that Cloud had somehow gotten caught up in it. There were a lot of questions but he still couldn't remember what had happened. The doctor had said it was to be expected and the memory loss was likely due to the concussion. Whether it would come back to him or not was another thing.

***  
A few hours later, Cloud was sitting on the couch talking to Zack and trying to tell him everything that he did remember, at least about how he had come to obtain the Nibel Hopper. Zack couldn't stop laughing at him over it but was just as affectionate as Cloud was with it and swore he would do what he could to make sure it didn't end up back in the labs.  


When there was a knock at the door, Zack quickly scooped up the critter and hid him in his bedroom, before going to answer the door. When he came back to the living room with a couple of TURKS trailing behind him, Cloud got worried.  


They sat down on the couch opposite Cloud and Zack retook his seat beside the blond before the dark-haired TURK started talking. By the time the man had finished, Zack looked like he was ready to murder someone and Cloud had gone completely white.  


All of the evidence they had gathered pointed to Cloud being the luckiest son-of-a-bitch this side of Gaia. Other lab workers that had been questioned had recalled Cloud being in the lab waiting area and then later in one of Hojo's labs with the man, the same lab which he had woken up in. The blood tests had also come back as being odd, Cloud had signs of a sedative in his blood and for there to still be remnants after all of the time it took to get the tests done after he had woken, the dosage had to have been a considerable amount. It was no wonder Cloud didn't remember a thing, he was probably unconscious through the entire event. Due to that evidence and there being no signs of a fight or struggle of any kind, the incident was being considered an unfortunate accident.  


Zack had asked what was being done about Hojo and his 'misuse of cadets' and the Turk, Tseng, had simply said "Hojo will no longer be an issue" He looked between the two confused men before smiling a little "Remember the pile of smoking ashes you saw upon waking?"  


Cloud nodded and then stopped as he realized what was being said "That was... oh... I think I need to shower.... right now" He quickly got up and headed to Zacks bathroom to do just that. He felt like he was covered in dead mad scientist ash, even though he knew he wasn't, but just the thought made him ill.

***  
Once he had scrubbed himself raw in the hottest shower he could remember ever having and then drying himself off more vigorously than ever, he climbed into one of the spare pairs of PJ's Zack had for him in case of sleepovers and then went back out to the living area.  


The TURKS had left almost as soon as Cloud had run to the shower and Zack had ordered them some Wutain for dinner. As they were waiting for the delivery, Zack raided his vegetable bin for the Hopper. Once he was done, he set a plate of various fruits, vegetables, and leafy greens down on the floor for it. It loped over and started munching on the greens and Zack smiled "You know, you're gonna have to come up with a name for this little guy?"  


Cloud hummed "I never liked the idea of naming pets straight away. I think I'd like to get to know him better before doing that"  


Zack shrugged and then ran to get the door because he could smell the Wutain before the delivery guy had even gotten out of the elevator.  


They ate dinner and watched a movie before heading off to bed. Zack held him extra close that night and Cloud knew it was because he was thinking about how he could have lost him. If Hojo hadn't just made him disappear, whatever accident had happened in the labs could have killed him as well. Luck was the only reason he was alive and they both knew it.

***  
The next morning had Zack waking up to an empty bed and with a frown, he called out to his blond. When he got a response he sighed in relief and plodded out into the kitchen to find Cloud sitting on the floor with the Hopper. He was happily feeding the fluffball some Celery leaves, but there was something off with him. Like he was worried about something, so Zack carefully sat down beside him and pulled him into his side to snuggle "What's up Sunshine?"  


Cloud snuggled close and hummed. He wasn't sure how Zack would react to what he was about to tell him, so instead he said "I've decided on a name for this little guy" He rubbed the hopper between its ears and grinned as he got a lick on the tip of his finger for his troubles before the hopper went back to munching.  


"Oh yeah? Let me hear it" Zack said cheerfully.  


"I decided that Ember was a good name for him" Cloud said nervously.  


Zack paused for a moment. It was a cute name, but considering the circumstances that he came by the rabbit, it was a little odd "Ember, huh? That's cute, but, why that? Didn't you say you were gonna see what it's personality was like first?" Zack carefully moved Cloud around so he could see his face and wasn't that surprised to see him biting his lip and not looking up at him.  


When Cloud finally looked up at Zack, he saw the confused and worried look on his face and knew he had to tell him "I remembered what happened in the labs" He said quietly, then let out a big sigh. Zack pulled him back into his side as he started to tell him.

***  
_The footsteps echoing down the hall belonged to Professor Hojo, who smiled at Cloud as he stood up. Cloud tried not to shudder at the smile, it was beyond creepy and suddenly he felt the urge to get as far away from the man as possible. He figured it was due to all of the creepy stories you heard about him as a cadet, so he smiled back politely and followed the man down the hall and into the room where he was asked to sit on the table. He carefully placed the Hopper nest on the end of the table before hopping up to sit beside it._  


_"Well my boy, it's no wonder you aren't having the best results in your physical classes, your recent blood tests are showing a deplorably low level of a number of vitamins and minerals. It's likely due to the differences in_ _diet since coming here from the Northern continent, nothing to look so worried about I assure you. That's why I brought you in here, we are going to give you a bit of a booster shot to help your body level out. Roll up your sleeve for me, we have a few shots to give you so I'll put a line in to make it easier"_  


_Cloud listened to him as he bustled around the room. The man seemed eager, but Cloud figured it was probably good for a person to enjoy their work, better than someone who hated it and only did it out of necessity he supposed. He rolled up his sleeve and the crook of his elbow was quickly swabbed with an alcohol wipe, then a needle with a tube attached was quickly inserted into one of his veins and stuck to his arm with tape._  
_Cloud was a little confused by this, he didn't think that was needed unless he was staying there for an extended time, but all he knew of medicine was what he saw on tv dramas and they were probably not accurate so he shrugged it off._  


_The professor came over with the first injection and put it in "This will feel a little warm, nothing to worry about though" He said as he turned around to get the next one ready. Cloud did feel a warmth spread up his arm and then into his chest and all over his body. He started to blink slowly as he watched the Professor grab something out of the locked fridge. He heard a small sound and looked down to see the Hopper peeking its head out and looking at Cloud._

_He giggled a little because he could almost swear the little fella looked worried about him._  
_It wasn't until Cloud turned back to look at Hojo that his brain finally caught up with what was happening "Why did you giveme a setadive- seditave- sedative?" His words were slurred and as he tried to stand up his legs were trying to give out._  


_As the man turned around he looked annoyed "Get back on the table you fool" He huffed as he came towards him and Cloud backed away staring at the syringe in his hand._  


_"Thas mako! wh'are ya doin ta me?" He caught himself on the end of the table as he was about to fall again._  


_As Hojo opened his mouth to say something else they both heard a loud snorting growl. Turning around, Hojo took a few steps away from the table "WHAT IN HADES IS THAT DOING IN HERE!?" Cloud just looked at the Nibel Hopper in confusion as it took a menacing step towards the scientist and hissed loudly._  


_Cloud might have laughed at the shriek the man let out, if it wasn't for the fact that at that same moment, the Hopper turned to the side and thumped it's back foot towards Hojo, before jumping at Cloud and knocking him on his ass as a large explosion rocked the room and a pillar of fire incinerated the Scientist._  


_As Cloud's head hit the ground and he started to lose consciousness, he noticed a wall of sparkles surrounding himself and the Hopper._  
***

Cloud sat there silently, nursing the Hopper in his lap while Zack processed what had happened. It didn't take him long to make a decision. He knew in theory, he should have taken the rabbit straight back down to the labs and made sure it couldn't hurt anyone else, but frankly, it had protected the thing most precious to him and for that, he couldn't do anything other than picking it up to snuggle it while saying thanks.  


Cloud watched him and smiled "So, we can keep him?" He asked surprised.  


"Hell yeah, I'm not letting anything happen to my sunshine's protector" He grinned and kissed the blond on the nose. "Ember is the perfect name for this little guy!"

***  
Ember became known as the destroyer of evil by all of the SOLDIERs once Zack had let the three Generals know the true story of Hojo's death and it didn't take long for the news to spread. He became the unofficial mascot of SOLDIER and Gaia help anyone who tried to hurt or steal him. He could always be found on the SOLDIER floors when Cloud was at lessons or on patrol and Zack was on a mission, and it wasn't unusual to hear SOLDIERs arguing about who got to feed the little guy lunch.  


Once Cloud made it into SOLDIER, Ember started coming to train with him. Striking down enemies with less lethal paw thump explosions and much to Cloud and everyone else's surprise, lightning bolts thrown with an ear flick. 

Unfortunately, jumping up and knocking Cloud on his ass was the only way the little guy knew how to make a barrier around them, but Cloud was learning to get used to his timing on those and bracing for them. It was worth it for the kickass protection it provided.  


They even made Ember his own little set of First Class SOLDIER armor as a gift when Cloud made it to First Class.  


He became known as the only SOLDIER with his own battle pet and whenever they took out an enemy (or a sparring partner) it was jokingly called a Nibel Double Knockout.  


**Author's Note:**

> This was written for Cloud's Birthday. I don't usually do it (because I have a memory like a sieve and never remember character's birthdays), but this year EvilRobotCat reminded me that it was Cloud's birthday, so I'm gifting it to her for the reminder. 
> 
> I'll be honest, I was totally gonna call this one in by editing a story I have sitting there written already, but just haven't posted yet, but then a bug bit me. Hence the lateness, coz this is 100% new material, written today, edited today, not beta'd by anyone, so all mistakes are mine. Let me know if you find any. ♥


End file.
